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Sunday, September 05, 2010

Bo & I attended Phoenix Cooks! on Saturday and had a great day out. We had never attended before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. We headed out to the JW Marriott Desert Ridge and found tons of amazing food and wine to indulge in. There was about one wine table for every 3 chef tables, and we noticed that some people really enjoyed those wine tables.

Not only was there amazing food to sample, but the four stages had almost constant demonstrations and there were multiple cooking classes offered as well. Bo & I spent most of our time walking around and sampling, but we did watch Chef David Blom from the Fairmont Scottsdale make an amazing peach compote trifle.

The event is a great way to sample from some of the best restaurants in metro Phoenix. We hadn't eaten at many of the restaurants represented, but we now know where to find some of the best lobster bisque, caramel pana cotta, chocolate desserts and delicious cocktails.

In addition to the food, there was wine and spirits. We tried Cruz Tequila, as well as a delicious drink made with Absolut Vodka, basil and grapefruit juice.

The event was very crowded, which was a bit uncomfortable for me. I think that if we had tried harder to attend more of the cooking demonstrations, it would have been a better value for the tickets. They definitely provided a wide variety of demonstrations, so I only have myself to blame!

I loved that they provided trays with cutouts for our wine glasses to make sampling easy, but I wish they had provided some sort of scorecard for all the wines we had the opportunity to sample. It was hard to remember the names of all the wineries, especially when I was on my 3rd sample of Shiraz.

I'm not sure if we'll attend again next year, but if we do, I will try harder to attend more of the demonstrations. I'm sure I could have learned a ton!